![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
when loved ones fight
Apr. 17th, 2007 06:55 pmI am part of a spieces and culture destroying the world, and I am doing my part. It's easy to see the problem; it's everywhere around us, not just in the news but in our daily lives as well. Knowledge of the problem does not carry over into action about the solution, because There Is No Alternative has been drilled into us all since birth. Consumption, sprawl, space and instant gratification are so commonplace as to be seen as a birthright, not the luxury unknown to even the wealthiest just a few generations back.
Every day I travel a mere 24 miles one way by car. There are no viable public transit alternatives, I say, and depending on terminology, that might be true; it's hard to get excited about adding adding an hour and a half to two hours to my hourly one way time, and it's easy to blame lack of interest in the common experience of share transit to the spectre of racism and the peculiarly American entitlement of one person, one car. I drive a 'sensible' car, but I could do better.
I walk into a large glass box, and take the elevator to the second floor because, for security reasons, I cannot take the fire stairs up, only down. I walk down an unnecessarily brightly lit hallway and reach for my plastic key card; the lock to my office is electronic, underscored by the ambient temperature of the door knob being notably warm to the touch. Even these little things reek of decadent excess to me lately, but that fades as I step into the general office space. Large glass panels cover the outer wall, windows that are designed to never open, to effectively seal one away from the elements and require internal powered management at all times. Banks of flourescent lights are constantly burning over rows of empty cubes, 'to look business appropriate', I'm told.
These experiences, or similar ones, are everyday living, and we don't notice. Recycling is out of vogue, replaced by the reflexive thumbing one's nose at 'all of that' if it's pointed out. Even if one makes an effort to recycle, it becomes quickly evident that many of the ostensibly recyclable numbered items are effectively a dead end, as almost no place takes them. More and more, as I look at every piece of discarded plastic in my own home, I see petroleum becoming inert, useless, and yet consumption and production of petro products only increases.
I try. I limit my driving. I buy local whenever I can. I change bulbs to flourescent while considering led, though I don't know the environmental cost of production for either. I contribute to many environmental non-profits; I write letters to my members of congress and local government; I purchase carbon offsets for everything I own, and then some, but I know it's not enough, would not be enough if every person on earth did it. It seems painfully obvious that the status quo is not only unsustainable, but heading quickly for the cliff's edge. We can't live like we have been, and yet we only want more, take more, as others do the same, or gear up to fight for their share of the one time, impossible bounty. Faced with all of this, it's easy to see why some say the best thing you can do for the environment is kill yourself, and indeed, why so many committed environmentalists have begun to do so.
And yet... I want desperately to live, and want others to live just as desperately: not just those I know, but all of them, everywhere. I still hold true to the idea that collectively we can make the fall better, more equitable, even if we can't stave it off. Everyone wants to be able to care for their families, feed and shelter them, and that's completely understandable, but in doing so, we all contribute to making the world worse. I don't know how to balance the macro to the micro, and all the while, we're being sold the idea of bounty without end by those who tell us all the lies we want to hear, who make a fat profit out of scarcity they hide from us at our asking.
I want to save the world, and I want to save everyone in it. I don't know how.
Every day I travel a mere 24 miles one way by car. There are no viable public transit alternatives, I say, and depending on terminology, that might be true; it's hard to get excited about adding adding an hour and a half to two hours to my hourly one way time, and it's easy to blame lack of interest in the common experience of share transit to the spectre of racism and the peculiarly American entitlement of one person, one car. I drive a 'sensible' car, but I could do better.
I walk into a large glass box, and take the elevator to the second floor because, for security reasons, I cannot take the fire stairs up, only down. I walk down an unnecessarily brightly lit hallway and reach for my plastic key card; the lock to my office is electronic, underscored by the ambient temperature of the door knob being notably warm to the touch. Even these little things reek of decadent excess to me lately, but that fades as I step into the general office space. Large glass panels cover the outer wall, windows that are designed to never open, to effectively seal one away from the elements and require internal powered management at all times. Banks of flourescent lights are constantly burning over rows of empty cubes, 'to look business appropriate', I'm told.
These experiences, or similar ones, are everyday living, and we don't notice. Recycling is out of vogue, replaced by the reflexive thumbing one's nose at 'all of that' if it's pointed out. Even if one makes an effort to recycle, it becomes quickly evident that many of the ostensibly recyclable numbered items are effectively a dead end, as almost no place takes them. More and more, as I look at every piece of discarded plastic in my own home, I see petroleum becoming inert, useless, and yet consumption and production of petro products only increases.
I try. I limit my driving. I buy local whenever I can. I change bulbs to flourescent while considering led, though I don't know the environmental cost of production for either. I contribute to many environmental non-profits; I write letters to my members of congress and local government; I purchase carbon offsets for everything I own, and then some, but I know it's not enough, would not be enough if every person on earth did it. It seems painfully obvious that the status quo is not only unsustainable, but heading quickly for the cliff's edge. We can't live like we have been, and yet we only want more, take more, as others do the same, or gear up to fight for their share of the one time, impossible bounty. Faced with all of this, it's easy to see why some say the best thing you can do for the environment is kill yourself, and indeed, why so many committed environmentalists have begun to do so.
And yet... I want desperately to live, and want others to live just as desperately: not just those I know, but all of them, everywhere. I still hold true to the idea that collectively we can make the fall better, more equitable, even if we can't stave it off. Everyone wants to be able to care for their families, feed and shelter them, and that's completely understandable, but in doing so, we all contribute to making the world worse. I don't know how to balance the macro to the micro, and all the while, we're being sold the idea of bounty without end by those who tell us all the lies we want to hear, who make a fat profit out of scarcity they hide from us at our asking.
I want to save the world, and I want to save everyone in it. I don't know how.
